this is expected behavior:

$ nix-build -A man
/nix/store/gkrcn0xm6qrjhp5blwryx1a5qjhl52rc-man-db-2.9.3

this is probably the behavior you want, but it assumes that you have a "nixpkgs" nix-channel

$ nix-env -iA nixpkgs.man

Well I don't think expected behavior that the 3rd pill is broken :)

The online search suggests nix-env -iA nixos.man. It seems like the namespace is different if you're using the nixos vs nixpkgs (I'm new here, so I might not be using the right words).

I happen to have some nixos boxen, but I was working through the pills on an Ubuntu machine w/ nixpkgs. This sort of friction early on in the learning phase can have a large negative effect on trying out nix*. As pills are useful to people new to nixpkgs and nixos (i.e. me), there's probably value in having instructions that work for either environment.

Is there a way to do that without using nix-env -i man-db?

nix-env kind of deviates from expectations, in fact, I never use it personally.

As pills are useful to people new to nixpkgs and nixos (i.e. me), there's probably value in having instructions that work for either environment.

Agreed, unfortunately nix-env is opinionated about your particular environment and channel names

Maybe we should just just replace the use of nix-env with nix-shell, which can pull in packages into a new shell session:

$ nix-shell -p man
[nix-shell:~/projects/nixpkgs]$ man
man         mandb       manpath     man-recode

However, this doesn't "install" man

I should have merged this, but this was resolved in #157